More Mobile: The New Setup (Premium)

Thanks to some Amazon gift cards and the Black Friday sale, I’ve upgraded my more mobile computing setup pretty significantly. Here’s a quick peek.

I wrote about my purchases a few days back in More Mobile: Black Friday (Premium). I wont burden you with more affiliate links here, but I did make two more small purchases since posting that, both noted below, and all of my items have now arrived. But the total cost, including Black Friday discounts, was almost exactly $200. And because I had a bit more than that in Amazon gift cards, there was no out-of-pocket cost for any of this, which is nice.

Upfront, let me just point out that two of the items—the Anker Power Strip with USB-C and the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Wireless Desktop Set (which is no longer on sale)—aren’t being used at the moment. I will always travel with the former going forward, and I’ll open the keyboard/mouse box when my current set fails. I explained the rationale behind both of these purchases in the previous post.

Anyway, the biggest change here is the Lifelong Ergonomic Laptop Stand, which is a significant upgrade over the Nexstand Portable Laptop Stand I had been using since I started this experiment back in September. (Well, now it’s just how I work, so it’s not really an experiment anymore.) At first, I paired the Nexstand with a 15-inch laptop, a loaner Thunderbolt 3 dock, and the normal set of peripherals I’d be using with a desktop PC.

A lot has changed since then. I continued to minimize the number of items I had to keep on my desk—I even minimized the desk, in that I switched to a smaller one—and I’ve rotated between several different laptops of varying sizes (typically 14-inches but also at least one with a 13.3-inch display). I also purchased a USB-C hub, replacing that dock with something that is more compatible and more portable. (And that I actually own.)

As I noted previously, I like the portability of the Nexstand, but I’d had my eye on the Lifelong Ergonomic Laptop Stand that I just purchased for a long time. I had just never pulled the trigger because it was so expensive, at $120. And it wasn’t critical in the short-term: the Nexstand does the job. But with Black Friday upon us this past week, I discovered that it was on sale for basically half-off, and I was delighted to see that The Wirecutter selected it as a top laptop stand pick for those that need a taller stand, as I do for ergonomic reasons. And it even supports 17-inch laptops. You never know.

Pulling the new laptop stand out of its box, I was first struck by how heavy and dense it felt: it weighs 4.36 pounds, which is on the low end of the weight range for a typical 15-inch laptop. (The HP Envy 15 that’s currently sitting on it weighs 4.74 pounds.) And it took some effort to pull it open, which I took as proof that it’s well made and sturdy. Which it is.

I was also delighted by the height adjustment, which I find to be both easy to use and, well, sturdy. Which I guess is really the right word to describe this device in general. Between its metal construction, properly wide base, and height adjustment, this may just be the perfect laptop stand for my needs.

Aside from the build quality and height, there’s another major difference between this laptop stand and the one I was using previously. Where a laptop base sits on the Nexstand at an angle, the Lifelong is designed to be used as a flat surface for the laptop. In other words, you will typically orient the laptop such that the display is perpendicular to its base, assuming that you adjust the height correctly, which I have. This looks a little weird to me, only because I’m so used to the Nexstand. But it has some benefits.

First, it’s much easier to place and then remove a laptop from this stand; with the Nexstand, there was a bit of finagling to do just to get it out of the plastic frame. And more important, this means that the Lifelong could be used with non-laptop devices, like tablets. It’s not possible to use Surface Pro 8 (or my iPad Air, I guess) with the Nexstand, but either would work fine with the Lifelong. (Assuming you use an external webcam, that is, since the Surface Pro 8’s camera would be angled upward with the kickstand engaged.)

I also used this opportunity to make another change that had been bothering me: because the USB-C cable on my USB-C hub is so short, I had to jury-rig the hub up into the web of the Nexstand’s intricate parts, and I was never happy with that. With the Lifelong, I can at least hide the hub by putting it behind the display, but that’s inelegant and it could fall. So I researched USB-C cable extenders that wouldn’t hamper the performance of any devices attached to the hub and purchased a UGREEN USB C Extension Cable for about $12. That lets me position the hub further away from the raised laptop.

Even better, I then attached the hub to the Lifelong stand using two pieces of Velcro (one on the stand’s base and one on the bottom of the hub). That keeps the hub in place, and behind the stand where I don’t have to look at it. And I can easily detach the hub from the stand for travel; the Velcro won’t prevent the stand from folding shut. Nice.

As noted previously, I had purchased an Anker PowerPort III 65W Pod Lite USB-C charger for a variety of reasons, but the key one, for now, is to power that USB-C hub. This will keep the charger for whatever laptop I’m using free for travel, which is a nicety. And because it’s smaller than the typical PC charger, I could later decide to travel with that, and then use it to charge all of my devices on the road.

So that’s nice. But what I had forgotten was a USB-C cable to connect that charger to the hub. I started to do a bit of research to make sure I was getting a high-enough quality cable for this purpose, but then I realized I needn’t bother: I was paying for this with a gift card balance anyway, so there was no cost to me. And I just went with something I know will work just fine: a 6-foot Apple USB-C Charge Cable, which cost about $18. This is the cable Apple uses for its MacBook Pros, so it should handle anything I can throw at it.

(If you’re keeping track, the two USB-C cables, one an extender, are the two items I purchased since writing that last article.)

And there we are. I really like the look of the new setup, but I especially appreciate how sturdy and well-built that stand is. It’s really nice.

More soon.